


three of coins, six of cups

by aislinngun



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Canon Compliant, Gen, M/M, Pre-Slash, The Barns, The Lynch Family, The Past, Unresolved Emotional Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-17
Updated: 2016-04-17
Packaged: 2018-06-02 21:58:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,941
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6584176
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aislinngun/pseuds/aislinngun
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Neither is gentle to himself, but sometimes they can be gentle to each other. Or, one day in the Barns, two boys listening to the echoes of the past.</p>
            </blockquote>





	three of coins, six of cups

**Author's Note:**

> The thought of writing it down wouldn't even cross my mind, if not for the amazing, most supporting and insanely talented artist, [f0x-meets-w0lf](http://f0x-meets-w0lf.tumblr.com/). If not for her, I would be still dead convinced that I shouldn't even think about writing, let alone in a language other than my own.  
> [Floating-khoshek-floats](http://floating-khoshek-floats.tumblr.com/) is the one that was to conquer my mad grammar and punctuation, which was a task worth a whole poem, as every hero deserves to have one about them.  
> Here's to them! Thank you for all you've done for me, for the patience and inspiring conversations.

_  
Three of Coins – you are not far into the path, but this is the first time you’re starting to feel you enjoy it. It’s not even middle of the road yet, but you feel like you’ve accomplished something already, and this is the right place and time to be happy about this. Keep eyes on your goals and allow yourself some help. Partnership is a good thing to rely on._

_Six of Cups – look back. You will find there many memories, good and bad alongside each other, but time heals all wounds and you can feel it. All old worries are just spikes of melancholy now, and only enhance the wonderful things that happened. Look at your childhood and approach present relationships with the same childlike enthusiasm. Don’t get caught up in the illusion that the better days are solely in the past.  
_  


***

Somewhere between “Going to Barns. You in?” and “I'm going to dive in, Parrish. Entertain yourself,” Adam managed to shake off the residual dust and dirt from work that was clinging to his mind the same way it was clinging to his hair and clothes, and achieve that weird, relaxed state that he rarely had the occasion to feel. Always something to do, always somewhere to be, never wanting to be or do any of that if not for the money it provided.

Sometimes, when he was in Barns with Ronan trying to dream up a solution to his problems, Adam felt restless and jittery for long spans of time like an idling engine, tiring himself without any outcome that would be worth the struggle. If he stayed there long enough though, the Barns always managed to work its magic and slowly lull him to calmness, putting his mind in a strange lethargy that was neither pleasant nor unpleasant, but compared to the previous state it felt like a slow large drops of rain falling on a cracked dry earth.

Sometimes, like today, just the journey of driving here with Ronan was enough. Companionable silence filled with the constant sound of the BMW engine working smoothly, the smells of gasoline and the car's interior grounding after a shift at shop, where everything was too loud and too colourful.

The humid air coming in through the open windows carried smells of wet asphalt and green pastures surrounding the road. The only sounds were the swish of the wind and squeaking of the leather upholstery when one of them moved. 

Adam was sinking into all those sounds and smells and views, slowly decompressing from his tight posture, his limbs losing the sharp angularity and spine becoming a lax curve. The process was so gradual that he had only noticed when his shoulders dropped, not upheld by tense muscles around the neck anymore. He breathed deeply and closed his eyes for a second. The sun was shining through the front glass of the BMW and through his eyelids, making the darkness behind them bright warm orange. Cabeswater whispered indistinctly into his deaf ear, filling it with quiet sough of wind rustling the leaves on the trees far, far away. It was subtle enough that he couldn’t differentiate the words even if he wanted. This lullaby for two voices, one to each ear, soothed Adam’s tired mind effectively, almost to the point of sleep.

Ronan was silent, often a state that was easy to forget about, because when Ronan wasn’t quiet, he was quite spectacularly and unforgettably loud. He didn't even try to put on any music, which was not as normal, but Adam let that slip as there were no other signs of strangeness accompanying it. It was probably one of those days, when they didn't need much of a verbal communication anyway, silently glancing at each other and doing what was need to be done without more than a single eyebrow rise or shoulder shrug.

Right now it was clear that Ronan wanted the silence as much as Adam did, and it wasn't a thing as uncommon as one might expected. When Ronan raged with anger, he craved indeed loudness of music and crash of things breaking just to quiet out the nagging thoughts in his head. Other times he seemed to let silence happen just fine. Adam wondered if maybe those were the glimpses of Ronan–before.  
He wasn’t so vain to think that maybe Ronan could feel at peace at Adam’s side, just because Adam did.

For now, Adam relished in the quietness of the world and the simple fact of being exactly where and when he wanted to be.

Time was a flexible thing when spent with Ronan Lynch. Out of this space they were creating, time flew by, with Adam always awaited but never needed. Perfectly replaceable, his presence was demanded not for who he was, but for his function as a cog in the machine, his role tied only with being in a specific place at a specific time for the other things to go smoothly. However, in the car on the way to Singer’s Falls or within the Barns, time and space felt like closed in a bubble. He didn’t even try to separate one from another that much.

At such moments he always thought he finally knew more with his heart than his head what Gödel’s corrections of the general relativity were all about. He didn’t actually care that much about the mathematical side of the theory, but it held a certain grounding feeling to the philosophy. After all, Adam always thought of himself as a pragmatist.

Ronan was a fixed point that gave Adam at least one coordinate to root himself in reality. This time he chose to anchor himself in place, so the sudden stopping of a car was a bit of a surprise for him. He had no idea for how long had he kept his eyes closed or how long had he been letting his senses free one by one to explore. The only indicator they’d reached their destination before Adam opened his eyes and looked around, was the change of how the air smelled, so similar and yet completely different compared to any other place on earth.

Adam slowly pulled himself out of a seat and get out of the car. He yawned and stretched his arms a bit while Ronan was closing the doors. Still without a word, they headed straight to the house and into the room where Ronan used to dream up his way to wake the dream beings.

It wasn’t the first time he’d brought Adam along. And not the last, most probably, judging by Ronan’s rising frustration after every failed attempt of waking the cattle up and growing determination to fix things. Adam hadn’t had actually the slightest idea why Ronan insisted for taking him here. He had no useful abilities that could help the case nor was he the most delightful company one could ask for. In fact, Adam kept asking himself why any of his friends were hanging out with him, as he was tired, grim and on the silent side of making conversation most the time lately. Well, the ability to listen closely or at least make a believable appearance could appeal to Gansey and his neverending story of the search for Glendower. Adam sometimes thought that Gansey was actually more like making necessary pauses between storytelling to perform essential life functions than telling the story in between events of his life. It was not unlikely that he could probably move his external monologue to the interior of his mindspace and function just as good without Adam’s assistance.

With Noah, Adam didn’t speak alone that much, but when he did, the scarily truthful conversations that Adam tried to avoid, happened sometimes. And on this plane Noah still was the one that had more to offer than Adam, once again.

Ronan, on the other hand, was an entirely different case than Gansey’s brilliant presence or easy companionship with Noah, when they didn’t try to dissect each others’ minds. With Ronan, Adam fought a lot. Fighting was a regularly repeating occurrence and, strangely, never made Adam angry the same way the fights with his family did. It felt more like confirming he was still alive and kicking, than this empty hollow feeling taking him whole, head to feet, after seeing another and another bruise from his father appearing on his skin back when he lived in the trailer park.

Sometimes he dared to tease the thought that maybe Ronan picked fights with him just to make sure both of them were still living, not just existing. Fights with Ronan felt more like sparring than a real battle, and a way of letting steam off, knowing the other can handle the punch not always meant for him or for a person at all. Ronan had his grief and Adam had his shitty life. They could use some punching instead of being punched, even though it lacked actual physical violence, as it wasn’t really Adam’s way.

Besides, it was not like fighting was all they did. There were quite long periods of calm silence between them neither tried to break, when they did their own things. Like when Ronan started to coming to Adam’s apartment at St Agnes and listening to music with his giant industrial headphones while lying on the floor, or trying to catch up on schoolwork when forced by Adam or Gansey. Actually, the forcing was more Gansey’s domain. Adam just counted on Ronan being sneakily infested by knowledge through osmosis, when he simply watched Adam studying aloud. Also, he was too furious that Ronan was carelessly throwing his possibilities out of the window to try any lecturing, as it would almost certainly form into a shouting match. Not very productive. Adam’s fury was not born only of jealousy of others having it all served on a silver platter, but also because Ronan was, contrary to popular belief, very much able to work hard if he wanted, and an obnoxiously intelligent, talented individual. Wasting that kind of potential was in Adam’s opinion, blasphemy and a spit in the face to those who had no such prospects.

Along with the quiet evenings in St Agnes, happened the ones filled with little talks. Sometimes mindless and pleasant, about things they both liked, sometimes more serious and strangely honest. Normally, Adam would feel very uncomfortable with sharing something that sat deep in him, raw and shapeless until clumsily caged in words. Not necessarily traumatic or personal, but still not prepared for exposition to the light, vulnerable like a photography in a darkroom. Those half–formed sentences spoken to Ronan never felt cheapened or too heavy. So, maybe after all that was the reason why Ronan was taking him to the Barns so eagerly – it didn’t feel like anything less or anything more that it was meant to be.

So, here they arrived by Ronan’s car, at this strange estate that looked like a patchwork hastily sewn by someone not really skilled and working in a very dark basement. And yet, all the different patches miraculously matched the rest, never clashing too harshly, always bonded with – what Adam thought must have been – Niall Lynch’s hand. All the strong Lynch family personalities were very easy to find here, but the omnipresence of Niall was impossible to overlook. It was, first and foremost, his property. _Exegi monumentum aere perennius_ indeed.

“Parrish?” came voice from afar. Adam didn’t realize that he stopped in his track and stared blankly for some time at the solid of the house, while Ronan was already halfway on the path to the front door. He shook himself off and went after, looking at the stark contrast between Ronan’s black, sharp silhouette and warm, saturated colours of the swirly lines and gentle slopes that the residence consisted of.

They stepped up through the dim corridor into the room that Adam supposed was Niall’s office before, and it was stocked full of dreamed things, chaotically piling along the walls, almost up to the ceiling in some places. There were shelves full of strange things, filling up the chests and coffers and a few cardboard boxes, and a lot of them were just lying on the wooden floor and velvet carpet. There was also a desk with a certainly dreamed lamp, as it had no apparent cord nor a place for batteries. What it had was a wooden stand and a glowing crystal globe for a light bulb. On the parapet stood a couple of pots in which grew a miniature birch tree -- complete to the single miniature leaf and paper-like pieces of peeling bark -- the flower that had something looking like hands made of petals instead of leaves, and another one that had feathers that trembled timidly whenever someone tried to touch it. Near the parapet, between the boxes and one of the chests was a big armchair with a warm quilt carelessly thrown across it. That was the place where Ronan usually nestled, curled up in ball or sprawled out, and tried to dream up the solution.

Sixty percent of the time when Ronan took him here, Adam sat on the other comfy chair standing beside the writing desk and had the quilt tossed in his face, and then they were trying to go to Cabeswater together. The other forty percent was Ronan claiming he didn’t need Adam’s contribution, so _go and entertain yourself, Parrish; there is plenty to do here._

By entertaining himself while Ronan dreamt, Adam meant mostly wandering around the house, rummaging in empty rooms, poking at things. He learned after few times that he had a sort of unspoken permission to do so, as Ronan didn’t seem to care if Adam was snooping around.

First he was very careful, consciously measuring every step and never going in the closed rooms. That didn’t leave so many to explore, even though the Barns was quite a big house. It had the aura of something akin to a pharaoh tomb, not meant to be disturbed. Instead meant to be preserved and conserved to withstand millennia. The differences and strangeness of the house lay in how recent the happenings that made it no longer so lively and lived in were. Yet, it felt like ages had passed on the outside, and nothing had changed in here. It concerned not only the house, but the whole homestead.

When, with weeks passing, Adam’s senses became numb to the disconcerting oddity of the atmosphere of the house, he started to go bolder and farther in, feeling like he was slowly submerging himself in the still intense though slowly vanishing presence of the Lynch family. It made him feel somehow protected, to get to know the fragmented remains of their past. Almost like he could met them when they were whole, like he could imagine they would’ve liked him, if Ronan would have brought him here.

Seeing Declan’s former room, or Matthew’s, or even Ronan’s was an archaeological study of past emotions, wins and failures, and it was so weird doing it when you knew that people who once lived in here were still alive. Adam wondered how it must feel for Ronan, who knew how animated it was all before.

Ronan didn’t appear that fazed by the stillness of his home. The atmosphere actually seemed to make him calmer and more settled in his bones, like he was fitting like a missing puzzle piece. Adam doubted he had an idea how it was, to miss a loved home, but judging just by the relief given by the possibility of coming here that made Ronan’s whole posture looser day after day, it was something that could make one feel either fixed or shaky. And Ronan was, it seemed, one of those whose childhood home makes them rooted. Adam drank in as much of this second-hand sensation as he could. Like a leech.

So Adam walked the hallways, ransacked through things, and inhaled the overwhelming feeling of protection of this sleeping timeless place, while Ronan dreamt in the office. Not a single thing in this house was meant for him, and yet, he let himself parasitize on all those beautiful things that were leaving something alike to a calming touch on his tired mind.

This time Adam went to the living room, big and with many windows, not so bright today as it was getting darker already, and the gathering clouds were slowly covering the sky, preparing it for a starless night. Still, it had plenty of light reflecting in the glass of the framed paintings and pictures hanging on the walls and shining on the edges of peculiar shaped vases and some of the sculptures. How many of them were bought from other artists, and how many were born of the dreams of an artist whose ghost still permeated the air here?

The shelves filling the space of one of the corners up to the high ceiling looked inviting. Adam blew on the books and reached for a random one. The dust particles wavered in the air, lit up gold by the beams of sun hanging low on the horizon. The cover of the book Adam took in hand was thick, deep red and downy. He smoothed its down, velvety feeling under his fingertips. He opened it on the first page and saw that it was filled with pictures instead of words. Any titles were complete gibberish, but with an intricate and beautiful font, curving and spiking on the letters. The pictures were a weird mash up of people he didn’t recognize, places he didn’t even know exist and slightly doubted some of them did. It was probably all dreamt. The style though was completely different than Ronan’s. Adam put it on the nearby small table, to browse it later. He reached for another book, and when he was taking it off, something fell out of this one. Adam bent down and picked up a thick white glossy rectangle of paper. He turned it up and blinked. It was a photography.

It was not very old, a bit faded, slightly overexposed – clearly made with an older type of camera. In the picture, Ronan was holding a bucket in his left hand, a chicken tucked under his right arm. The chicken looked displeased. Ronan, quite the opposite, was grinning from ear to ear, openly, carefree and a bit fondly at whoever was behind the camera. Adam had never seen him like that. Or dressed like that. Picture–Ronan wore ugly yellow rain jacket, flannel shirt and trousers tucked into high wellies. If not for younger but still boldly recognizable features and trademark closely buzzed head, he would thought that this was some cousin of the Lynches, or even Declan. There were some fragments of probably a coop and a stray chicken rump visible in the background. And some vivid greenery. It must’ve been spring or early summer.

Adam mindlessly stroked the picture with his thumb. He put back the album, no longer wanting to see its content. It was something private enough for him to not know if Ronan, even with his acceptance of Adam’s prowling, would be so keen to show to him.

He walked out of the living room, leaving Niall’s picture book on the table and the album tucked neatly in its original place. He went back to the office, where Ronan was probably awakening right now. Adam thought that today wasn’t one of this days when Ronan’s sleep dragged out to a longer period. He walked down the corridor into Ronan’s study.

Ronan was indeed waking up, unbending himself and straightening to a full stretch. He looked like a strange shiny–black bird ruffling and puffing its feathers in the nest. Sometimes Ronan and Chainsaw were almost laughably similar.

Ronan blinked a few times and rubbed his eyes. He looked sleepily at Adam, for those short seconds looking almost as vulnerable as Chainsaw did when she was a chick.  
“Nothing today?” Adam asked just for the record, already knowing that today wasn’t a day for accomplishments.

“No,” said Ronan hoarsely, knowing that Adam knew. He hoisted up, adjusted his jacket and walked to the door, standing eye to eye and nose to nose with Adam. Once Ronan had dropped his barricades of personal space, he had none left whatsoever, Adam had learned some time ago.

“Come on, Parrish. Let’s go.” Ronan said, pushing through the door next to Adam, brushing their shoulders together. Adam shrugged and followed him outside, already feeling the longing. He didn’t really want to go back yet.

Caught in thoughts, he didn’t realize they were heading to the actual barn that the place got its name from, where the cattle were sleeping. Absently staring at Ronan’s back, he didn’t even notice when did they both opened the big doors and sprawled their bodies partially on the floor, partially on some unsuspecting cow’s side. Adam thought that it was probably one of those days when he was more in his head than anywhere else, but here he could actually do it and without any repercussions.

Ronan patted the cow’s side with rough affection and stroked its muzzle, then got more comfortable on the hard floor. Adam acknowledged a good idea and tried to arrange himself better. He reached to his pocket to straighten up that something that was currently digging in through his pocket with a sharp edge, causing an unpleasant sensation in his upper thigh. Soda cap? Card?

It was the photograph.  
He took that goddamn photo and didn’t put it back.

He wanted to slip it back in and pretend nothing happened, until he had the occasion to put it back where it came from, but it was already too late. Ronan noticed the movement on his left and Adam’s panicked face, and immediately asked:

“What’s that, Parrish? You nicked something from work? Or is it some embarrassing shit?” Ronan’s grin was sharp as usual, thriving on Adam’s abashed expression. “Ooooh, Parrish, I didn’t expect you to have contraband stashed just like that in your pants,” he tutted mockingly.

On a normal day Adam would probably grunt out something about Ronan being overly interested with the contents of Adam’s pants, but he felt too guilty and flustered for that. He wordlessly handed out the photo and covered his eyes with his arm.

“‘m sorry,” he muttered. “It just fell out of the book and I was... I didn’t mean to take it.”

There was silence long enough for Adam to check carefully what’s going on. He lurked cautiously from under his elbow, and seeing Ronan not in state of raging fury, he uncovered his face.

Ronan was staring at the photo with a weird expression, holding it gingerly, like he couldn’t decide if he wanted to destroy it or put it away safely.  
“Have you seen the rest, Parrish?” Ronan said with voice strangely lacking usual sharp angles and angry curves.

“No. I just saw this one and put the album away. I know you probably didn’t want me to see it.” Adam said, feeling like he was forcefully tearing words out of his throat.

“Whatever, Parrish. I don’t care.” Ronan’s face was guarded mask again, solicitously expressionless, when he looked up from the photo at Adam.

 _Yes, yes, you do care, for fuck’s sake!_ Adam wanted to say. He wanted to shout at Ronan until this fabricated flat guise would shatter into pieces, but he knew it would be worst thing to do. It wouldn’t lead to anything constructive, although maybe to restoring their well–practised fight scheme, but that was not what he wanted.  
It wasn’t his place, to do such thing.  
And he couldn’t ever expect from others something he would never be able to do himself.

Both of them took their looks away, all tensed up and abruptly uncomfortable in their positions. Ronan awkwardly put the picture in his thigh pocket. The sun was still shining, the grass lit up golden–green, and the wind was bringing fresh air smelling like summer and oncoming evening, but it didn’t appeal to Adam’s senses as much as that relaxed second before he pulled out that bloody picture.

He felt a sudden pang of jealousy that Gansey had the occasion to know the Ronan from the picture. That smiling, careless Ronan who was holding a hapless chicken under his arm with ease. He must’ve done that many times.

Oddly, Adam never really gave a thought to Ronan’s past he spent, nevertheless, in the countryside. He always saw the side of boy who had so much money that he could buy almost anything, anytime he wanted, didn’t look twice or even at all at the prices in the mall, and never defiled himself with a job. Who was reckless, lavish with the lavishness of a prince that had it all, so he didn’t have to be any other way. And as contemptfully generous as the prince. Duke of dreamland, anguished and tormented, but at least not worried with the mundane.

That was what he thought the first years of their acquaintanceship, with afflicted Gansey making every effort to bring them all together.

Then it started to change, and Adam had to demolish his meticulously constructed vision, just to be honest when he couldn’t cheat himself more, and to do Ronan justice. He deserved every justice in the world.

And now, here he was, reevaluating yet another thing about this boy who was hiding himself behind knife–like smiles, bristly armour–like clothes (no matter what kind, Ronan made an armour of his skin and taut muscles with an equal ease) and angry, venomous words.

How could Adam be fooled at any time? This guy, asked why he wore combat boots every day, answered that those were the only shoes in the world that could bear the weight of his personality. For goodness sake. How was that even a guise of being cool?

Even now there were some cracks in the wall through which some brighter beams of Ronan’s personality still shone.

Adam felt daring for a couple of seconds. Before he had changed his mind, he asked:

“Was that some special chicken you’re holding on that pic, or is it just random one?” He turned his face to Ronan, finding him putting the pic on his thigh and dropping his arms alongside his body.

“Yeah,” Ronan grumbled, slowly getting rid of the devoid of emotions tone. “Mom had, like, this favourite hen. She was called Roberta. That was one stupid bird. But she always followed her, you know, when she was checking the eggs or throwing grain. Or just around. That stuff.” Ronan’s tense shoulders dropped too, and he moved them around to loose them up. Then he put his arms behind his head.

Adam’s lips twitched in an attempt of not smiling. “Roberta?” he asked, wondering how it happened, how he managed to coax out some information about Ronan’s past form him. “She doesn’t look particularly happy”. He said to give this conversation some semblance of normalcy. Delicate and less–than–delicate flings and hits, that’s how they communicated.

“That bird was fucking vicious for anyone who wasn’t Mom. ‘Course she looks the viper in disguise she was”. Ronan glanced at Adam and added, “Matthew had a favourite one too.”

“He did?” Adam felt himself smiling. Ronan was now openly gazing at him, caught with a strange expression on his face. Thankfully, completely different than the one from the tense moment before. Adam raised his brows, asking silently if everything’s okay. Ronan turned his eyes away suddenly, staring intently at the field.

“He raised it from the chick. It was as blond as him. Dad―” Ronan broke off and for a second Adam thought he wasn’t going to say anything anymore, but Ronan bit his lip and renewed: “Well, Dad always said that they were same feathered. Even both curly. Goldie was a frizzled pekin.”

Of course Lynch family had had fancy chickens. Also, Adam had no idea that it could provide so much joy to know that Ronan Lynch, local bad boy, was educated in hen’s breeds of all things. “Did all the chickens had names?” Adam was curious.

“Nah, not really.” Ronan sniffed. “You now, better not get so used to them when you gonna eat them sooner or later, right?” He rubbed his nose. “But some, yeah.”

“Oh, okay.” So Ronan Lynch was a very conscious non–vegetarian then. Adam didn’t really knew what to do with such a piece of info, except for the urge – to lock it up somehow, treasure as something shared by Ronan about his past of his own volition – that gnawed him just on the brim of his consciousness. He had no idea why being privy to such weird random information made him feel appreciated.

Ronan smirked. “What, Parrish, you thought chickens in your sandwich came from where exactly?” He probably took Adam’s awkward words and pause for the unpleasant recollection that most of the people who never had to kill their own food experienced once in a while when looking at their meat.

“Piss off, Lynch, ‘course I know. Doesn’t mean I think about it every time I eat a sandwich.” Adam said, but there was no heat in his words. He felt too light for this. Not only had he avoided the storm, but also invoked the rainbow.

“Chicken ain’t gonna kill itself. Even if they listen to you long enough.” Ronan dwelled on the topic.

“Oh, so that’s how you did it. You talked those poor creatures to death when their time was coming,” Adam shot back, smirking cheekily.

“You shut your mouth, Parrish, or we’ll be forced to find out if it works on people too, and I treasure my life too much,” grinned Ronan, and there was no sharp edge there. “Or maybe I’ll just carry you like a sheep to the brook and dump you there, so you’ll be too bothered with screaming to talk.”

“Do you actually know how to carry a sheep, though?”

“Do I actually know... Of course I know how to carry a damn sheep. I grew up on a fucking farm, if you didn’t notice.”

“Yeah, but that doesn’t mean you’ve been doing all this. Does it?”

Ronan gave him a heavy stare.

“Alright, I just assumed that―” Adam started, but Ronan interrupted him angrily:

“That I was fucking lazy?” His face was almost blanking out to that ‘default anger’ that Ronan showed everyone. Adam really didn’t want that to be shown to him.

“That you weren’t interested in all this. You hadn’t had to do it, if you didn’t want to, right? You’ve had workers, haven’t you?” Adam felt shaken somehow. He never actually gave this a thought, assuming Ronan wasn’t really into this whole ‘living on the farm’ shtick. And he really wanted to know the answer now, he wanted Ronan’s truth and thought on this. How it all was, according to him – not Gansey, not Declan. Just Ronan himself.

“Yeah, we did,” Ronan bit at his lip, “but we didn’t need them so much anyway. You know, dreamed up animals are not as problematic. But still, we had to groom them, feed ‘em.” He furrowed his brows, but the previous look was gone. Relief washed out Adam like a wave. “We always enjoyed all this. It was why we lived here. Why my dad dreamed this all up in here.”

“Yeah, I just―” Adam broke off, “I just never thought how exactly this all functioned.”

“How are you supposed to? You’d have no idea what to do with a livestock.” Ronan said calmly. “You would fucking die, left on your own in the country,” he snickered.

“Hey,” Adam jabbed him lightly in his side. “You never know. I can work.”

“You sure do,” Ronan said flat, giving him pointed look, a recollection of endless Gansey’s admonitions of Adam exhausting himself with work, never verbalized but silently aided by Ronan. Adam gave him wry look mitigated by his tiredness and staleness of the argument. “But it’s different,” Ronan added, not elaborating. Adam gave him questioning look. “You have to know _what_ to do. Just like fixing cars,” Ronan said.

Adam hummed agreeably, understanding what Ronan was trying to say.

He suddenly thought that Ronan would have actually much bigger chances to survive as a farmer than Adam ever would. Maybe he couldn’t exactly manage swiftly all this on the administrative side, but the practical part he had already practised. Adam, on the other hand, had literally zero knowledge about it. He would probably, as Ronan charmingly summed up, fucking die, left here to his own devices.

Still, if he got into college and graduated, he would know how to do the administering. If Ronan ever asked, Adam could help him keep this circus running.

Why would Ronan ever like to ask him for help, again?  
Why would Adam ever like to go back to Henrietta?

He wouldn’t, of course.

Adam wondered for a moment what was Ronan going to do after, hopefully, graduating. He looked at him – at how seamlessly Ronan fit in the patchwork of the fields, the neglected vegetable garden, the surrounding forest, the curvature of the road and the silhouette of the house – and thought that maybe if Ronan’s future was lying in here, it wasn’t as below him as they all were convinced.

Adam took his eyes off Ronan and looked straight ahead. The sun was finally setting. The evening approached them quietly with its humid cold coming from the woods. Grass on the pasture flattened with the blow of the western wind. They had all this tranquil world for themselves and the sleeping Barns to share with. There was such quiet everywhere, the only sound in Adam’s right ear was the whisper of the leather brushing against Ronan’s skin with his every breath.

They sat like that ‘till the sky became deeply blue, almost violet on the edges.

The night was almost palpable in the air, and Adam’s washed–out shirt was thin enough to let the cold come through. His arms were covered in goosebumps. He fidgeted.

Ronan glanced quickly at him and rose up on his feet, shaking tiny straws of hay and specks of litter off his trousers. He extended hand to Adam without a further word. Adam grabbed it and let himself be pulled on his feet. Their faces were close, hands still linked. Adam smiled with the corner of his mouth. Faint smile flickered across Ronan’s face like a reflection. He let go off Adam’s hand and jerked his head in the car’s direction. Adam went out of the barn, waiting for Ronan to close the squeaky door.

Sitting in a moving BMW, warm with the added layer of his hoodie, Adam was spread comfortably on the seat, content and getting sleepy.  
Despite no outcome of dreaming the wake in the cattle Ronan seemed not aggravated, and considering he was expressing nothing at all, he was probably feeling at least all right too. He turned the music on and the wistful tones of the Irish pipes lounged, filling the air with poignant sound. Then the guitars and drums joined, turning the slow melody into a rhythmic and lively song, blasting overwhelming waves of sound from the speakers and straight to Adam’s brain.  
Ronan was humming along and drumming his fingers on the wheel. Adam found himself smiling helplessly.  
In the glimmering black BMW, cutting through the night like a swift lustrous blade, they were driving back to Henrietta.

**Author's Note:**

> The _Exegi monumentum..._ line belongs to Horace and his _Carmina_ , _The Poet's Immortal Flame _and it means _“I have raised a monument more permanent than bronze”_. Which , I think, suits Niall Lynch very much. The whole poem, I mean.__  
>  Talk to me on [tumblr](http://pickyperkypenguin.tumblr.com/)!


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